Some embodiments disclosed herein relate to industrial assets and, more particularly, to systems and methods associated with scan path generation for a rotary additive manufacturing machine.
Traditionally, an additive manufacturing process may create parts in a linear fashion. That is, the parts may be sliced into a set of layers at a pre-determined (often equally spaced) heights, each of which may then be built sequentially by moving a laser beam in a pre-designed two-dimensional trajectory (the “scan path”).
Creation of an industrial asset item may be facilitated via a “rotary” additive manufacturing process. For example, a build plate may rotate about a vertical axis and move, relative to a print arm, along the vertical axis during printing. That is, the build platform might be lowered with respect to the print arm, the print arm might be raised with respect to the build platform, etc. Two improvements that may be associated with rotary machines as compared to linear counterparts include decreasing (or even eliminating) scanner idle time (increasing throughput as a result) and better space utilization for parts having certain shapes (e.g., a tube).
When the build platform of a rotary machine continuously rotates and drops down simultaneously (a downward spiral motion), however, it may not be feasible to slice the part into horizontal layers as is done for traditional machines. It would therefore be desirable to efficiently and accurately facilitate creation of an industrial asset item via a rotary additive manufacturing process.